When people complain about Catholic sexual morality, I often ask them to put forward an alternative sexual ethic. The critic almost always presents the "consent ethic," which basically goes like this: "As long as the sexual activity involves consenting adults, it is not immoral."

August 6 and 9 mark the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’ll be visiting those cities in October, doing research for a book. For months I’ve been reading histories and commentaries about the end of the war in the Pacific, and I’ve been brushing up on my Japanese. More months of research will follow my trip.

My particular focus is the rhetoric of the bombings: How do people talk about and debate them? Most particularly, how do people...

I would have loved to have had Jimmy Akin as my wingman in discussions with Protestants about Catholicism more times than I can count, but he is usually busy and, last I checked, hadn’t mastered the art of bilocation.

I was sitting at lunch one day with friends: one Catholic, two Protestants, and we were having a series of in-depth discussions about whether Catholicism was true or Protestantism was better. The debate ranged all over: justification, the canon of Scripture, sola...

Theists and atheists wield many weapons in the battle over the truth of God’s existence. One such weapon for theists is the moral argument, which asserts moral obligation is impossible without God. But since moral obligation is real, so the argument goes, it follows God must exist.

When it seems to the theist he has conquered his foe, the atheist grabs his own weapon of choice and fires back. That weapon is what has come to be known as the Euthyphro dilemma, taken from Plato’s...

This fall members of the Satanic Temple will offer a series of clubs in U.S. public schools. The goal of these clubs, which cater to children as young as five, is to expose students to ideas about secularism and Satanism they may not have heard before. According to...